Blackmon: Change is contradictory experience

Saturday

Dec 31, 2011 at 8:37 PM

Myra Blackmon

Everyone has a change strategy for the new year. At every turn, we encounter some recommendation about how to live healthier, make more money, eat better and have better relationships. Rarely is there anything really new.

Some of us will diligently eat right, go to the gym, or track every penny we spend for the first week or two of January, then fall back into our same old habits. Not many of us will change much.

Change is a contradictory experience for humans. We constantly seek to change ourselves for the better, but at the same time, we are loath to change.

We want our communities, our schools and our families to remain the same. We want our children to stay cute little kids forever. We long for the good old days, when things were ... well, not like they are now.

Change is inevitable. The trick is to understand change and decide whether we want to adapt or resist. A few of us will actually lose weight or become better financial managers. Others will decide it just isn’t worth it.

Community change is also inevitable, largely because of our capitalist economic system. Entrepreneurs see opportunity and design new processes, launch businesses or redevelop old properties.

For a while we complain and try to hang on to the way we’ve always done it, or the traditional use of the property. We make new business owners earn our business, as most of us are accustomed to the old way of doing things. Before long, though, we’re patronizing newer businesses and shopping or attending events at a redeveloped property.

In that way, almost all of us are conservative, but not in the political sense. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “conservative” as “tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions or institutions.” By that definition, many liberals maintain some conservative views.

When change rolls in, as it surely will, we have to look at it carefully. Is it transformational, such as a massive reorganization, a significant change to the way we shop, travel or do business? Or is it incremental, where we simply remodel what’s there, widen a highway or change a few internal procedures? While we tend to deal better with small, incremental changes, the transformational ones are those we often need most.

Perhaps the most important question is whether it is a change in methods or a change in values. We can initiate and successfully participate in sweeping changes if we keep our core values intact.

If we value opportunity and hard work, we can encourage entrepreneurs or others who work to make things run more smoothly or efficiently. An old friend of my once advised, “If it ain’t broke, you probably aren’t looking at it hard enough.”

If we value equitable treatment and fairness, we can get through a sweeping overhaul of tax structures or educational institutions, as long as we study carefully and insist that the change really does promote equality.

If we value freedom, we can accept, or in some cases, successfully resist, government rule changes that impact freedom, not just for ourselves, but for all of us.

If we value the status quo, we should take lots of photos and notes, for it will not be with us long. In its rich history, the United States has undergone both transformational and incremental change. The transformational changes — reuniting after a civil war, creating a public school system, expanding suffrage beyond white landowners, accepting waves of immigrants and incorporating their values and traditions into ours, and ending racial segregation, are the ones admired and copied.

The incremental changes, like tweaks to the tax code or nips and tucks in educational policy, are the ones that, while least painful, have created some of our biggest troubles.

That is not to say all change must be transformational, but with vigilance, good information and consistent core values, we can initiate, manage and accept change that really does make the world a better place. For all of us.

• Myra Blackmon, a local Banner-Herald columnist, works as a freelance writer, consultant and instructional designer.

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